Louis Althusser, Letter to the Communist Party of France Central Committee

20 Pages·2008·0.19 MB·English

Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172 www.brill.nl/hima
Letter to the Central Committee of the PCF,
18 March 19661
Louis Althusser †
Louis Althusser
45, rue d’Ulm
Paris 5th
A Letter to Comrades on the PCF’s Central Committee
Dear Comrades,
I have taken very careful note of the resolution2 passed at the last Central
Committee meeting.
Th is resolution contains several theses of both theoretical and practical
importance. To give only one example: the CC [Central Committee] had the
merit to adopt theses on theoretical work, the development of Marxist theory
and research, the conditions of this research (and the practical measures
planned to further this research), as well as the role of intellectuals and their
participation in the work of the Party, etc. Th ese theses, which resume and
1. Th e translator gratefully thanks the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine for
permitting this letter to be published and especially thanks José Ruiz-Funes for his research help
and editorial suggestions. Th e original is held at the IMEC in Paris under the code ALT2. A42-
04.02 under the heading ‘Lettre à Comité Central d’Argenteuil, 11–13 Mars 1966’. On both the
translation and note, G.M. Goshgarian unselfi shly provided excellent advice. Any errors that
remain are the translator’s. [Editorial note: To maintain typographic consistency, we have
changed Althusser’s underlined emphases to italics.]
2. Th e offi cial title of the document has ‘resolution’ in the singular and most documents that
refer to the resolution follow this pattern. Idiosyncratically, Althusser sometimes refers to the
resolution in the plural, as a series of resolutions. He is not, however, consistent and, by the end
of the letter, begins referring to the whole document in the singular. Th e translator has elected to
retain Althusser’s references to Resolutions I, II, and III. However, these should be taken only as
references to diff erent sections of one resolution, not to separate resolutions. He has also changed
all of Althusser references to ‘resolutions’ to the singular, ‘resolution’, so that the letter is internally
consistent and in accord with standard usage.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156920607X192110
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154 L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172
develop the declarations of the PCF’s Seventeenth Congress, should give a
certain ‘lift’ to our theoretical work, a boost whose importance is widely
recognised today.
Nevertheless, alongside these theses and occasionally in the very act of
stating them, the resolution contains a certain number of developments,
declarations, and arguments that appear to me to be – I cannot hide the fact –
doubtful, poorly grounded, or seriously off the mark when viewed from the
standpoint of Marxist-Leninist principles.3
I would like to explain my concerns to you very simply and frankly. I have
in mind only the interests of the Party’s Marxist-Leninist theory and would
ask that you consider the following remarks in the spirit in which they are
intended. Th at is, I would ask that you take them as a critique inspired by the
acknowledged principles of Marxism-Leninism and as a contribution to the
defi nition of a certain number of diffi cult but very important questions.
I. Th e resolution contains a contradiction
I will begin by examining a contradiction that the resolution appears to me to
contain.
Resolution III affi rms that
the development of science requires argument and research. Th e Communist
Party will neither impede such debates nor impose its own a priori truths. Still
less will it settle ongoing debates between specialists in an authoritarian
fashion.
It is obvious that this theoretically and politically correct thesis bears not only
on mathematics, the natural sciences, and the social sciences, but also on the
Marxist science of history (historical materialism) and Marxist philosophy
(dialectical materialism).
Indeed, the CC insists forcefully on the necessity of stimulating research
into Marxist theory. It does so in order to bring this theory up to the level at
which it can handle the diffi cult tasks before us.
Th us it is only natural that, regarding still unresolved points of Marxist
theory on which theoretical research is underway and absolutely certain and
acknowledged results have not been attained, the CC should recall that the
Party ‘will not impose its own a priori truths and, still less, settle ongoing
discussions between specialists in authoritarian fashion.’
3. All emphases are Althusser’s.
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L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172 155
It is important to make this point very clear. In question here is not the
substance of our theory as it stands today, the principles of Marxism-Leninism
and the knowledge it has already defi nitely acquired. In the domain of
established Marxist-Leninist theory, the Party cannot suspend judgement; on
the contrary, it is its duty to intervene in order to recall the principles and
knowledge acquired and developed by theory and class struggle, and to defend
them against all the revisions and deviations that menace them. If the Party
failed to do so, it would be renouncing its mission.
But what is in question here is something else entirely: namely, theoretical
problems which remain open and upon which the great teachers of Marxism
(beginning with Marx) did not or are said not to have taken a position. Th ese are
problems that have not been, or are said not to have been, posed or resolved
and, for this reason, problems about which we still do not possess, or are said
not to possess, reliable Marxist knowledge. Th is is, precisely, the case with
theoretical research on problems that remain open, and on which the Party has
good reason to suspend judgement. It must not ‘settle matters in an
authoritarian fashion’ before research has produced demonstrable results,
results that are incontestable and uncontested.
Now, this is where it seems to me that there is a contradiction: the same
resolution that rightly invokes the principle of non-intervention on theoretical
questions that remain open, does in fact intervene on several questions that, for
the last few years, have been the object of theoretical research and discussion
among specialists.
Allow me to explain myself.
Sometimes in casual formulae and sometimes in more categorical ones, the
resolution does in fact take sides, directly or indirectly, on several questions
that one can, at the very least (with a reservation that I will come to in a
moment), consider to be still open. Th ese questions are those of the
epistemological ‘rupture’ between science and ideology, between the Marxist
science of history and philosophies of history, and between Marxist philosophy
and pre-Marxist idealism. Th ey also include questions about the meaning of
the expression ‘Marxist humanism’ as well as others about the Marxist theory
of art and culture, and so on. I shall show this in detail in my letter.
Th e fact is that, on these questions that are of immense importance for
Marxist theory and practice, the resolution does not suspend judgement.
Instead, it ‘settles’ a theoretical debate that is still in progress, and, in so doing,
it takes a stand in favour of conceptions defended by certain comrades
(Garaudy, Aragon), and against others defended by other comrades (one of
whom is the author of this letter).
Formally, this partisanship brings the resolution into contradiction with
itself; one cannot square the principle of non-intervention into ongoing
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156 L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172
research and discussion with intervention into the very same research and
discussion. Hence it is impossible not to ask: ‘Why this contradiction?’
Examining the questions on which the resolution takes a position and
developing [where and how] these theses lead (or can lead) to theoretical errors
should allow us to make this question more precise.
I will analyse three errors in turn: an error by omission (II); an error by
suppression (III); and an error by ‘creation’ (IV).
II. An error by omission: the thesis on Marxist humanism
Resolution II approaches the question of ‘Marxist humanism’ by way of the
affi rmation that ‘there is a Marxist humanism’.
Th is affi rmation of existence only makes sense if one situates it correctly, in
the context of a polemic. It can only be understood as an affi rmation opposed,
word for word, to another, one of the ilk: Th ere is no Marxist humanism.
If one tries to discover the above-mentioned thesis (‘there is not a Marxist
humanism’), in our ‘ongoing research’, one will not fi nd it in this form.
However, one will fi nd in my essay ‘Marxism and Humanism’, as well as in
[the journal] La Nouvelle Critique,4 a very precise and very diff erent thesis, one
that is the object of a long discussion in the collective work Reading ‘Capital’.
Th is thesis affi rms that the Marxist science of history and Marxist philosophy
were only able to constitute themselves on the basis of a rupture with the
humanist philosophies and anthropologies that preceded them. It maintains
that Marxism is, theoretically speaking – that is to say, from the point of view
of its philosophical and scientifi c concepts – an anti-humanism, or, more precisely,
a theoretical a-humanism.
When we affi rm this principle, we have something extremely precise in mind:
namely, that, in Marx’s mature theory (science and philosophy) we do not fi nd
and will never fi nd, among the scientifi c and philosophic principles comprising
the base of this theory, any anthropological or humanist concepts. Th ese
concepts do fi gure in Marx’s early work (e.g., the concepts of humanism,
alienation, disalienation, the ‘loss of human spirit’, etc.). At the time they were
formulated, they were an organic part of the still ideological theory that Marx
worked up out of existing philosophies, history, and even a critique of political
economy (e.g., the 1844 Manuscripts). After the ‘rupture’ that began in 1845
and was only realised after years of work, Marx rejected the (theoretical )
humanist/anthropological conceptions of his youth. Th ese ideological concepts
4. Most probably a general reference to the anti-humanist arguments made in La Nouvelle
Critique. See especially number 164 (May 1965).
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L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172 157
disappeared and were replaced by other concepts. Th ese are the well-known
concepts of historical materialism: mode of production, juridical, political,
and ideological superstructure, etc. Th e ‘humanist’ concept of ‘alienated
labour’ disappeared as well, to be replaced by the scientifi c concept of ‘wage-
labour’. Marx no longer needed these dated ‘humanist’ concepts. He had
perceived that, far from yielding knowledge, these old concepts prevented him
from producing knowledge of his object (the history of societies and the
history of worldviews). Th at is why he rejected them clearly and decisively once
he saw that he had to forge other, totally diff erent concepts, in order to make
good the claim to produce knowledge of his object. Th e declaration of this
rupture may be found in black and white in Th e German Ideology, but it
necessarily took many years before the rupture was totally ‘accomplished’.
To say that Marxism is, theoretically speaking, an anti-humanism or
a-humanism, is quite simply to observe that, in Marx’s mature thought,
theoretical-humanist concepts are absent and are replaced by new scientifi c
concepts. Th is is a matter of fact. And we may add that neither Engels nor
Lenin ever re-introduced into Marxism the concepts of theoretical humanism
that Marx had rejected. One looks in vain in Engels or Lenin for even a single
mention of concepts such as alienation, alienated labour, ‘the reappropriation
of human nature’, etc.
It is quite remarkable that neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Lenin, nor Stalin
ever declared that ‘Marxism is a humanism’. True, Gorky employed this
formula; but we know that Lenin deemed Gorky to be a petty-bourgeois
revolutionary because of his ideology.
We also know that the concepts of theoretical humanism, already present in
Dühring, Bernstein, and the Russian populists, were put back on the
communist agenda in the 1920s by the left revisionists (e.g., the young Lukács)
and the right revisionist social democrats (e.g. Léon Blum).
Here is the thesis that I and many other comrades have defended: that the
theoretical concepts of Marxist philosophy and science have nothing to do with
the concepts of theoretical humanism. Th is thesis, I repeat, was the object of an
extended demonstration in Reading ‘Capital’. It has yet to be seriously contested.
Th at is to say, it has yet to be contested by a serious historical and philosophical
argument. In fact, it would be an extremely diffi cult thesis to contest.
In the same texts in which this demonstration is made, I pointed out that,
while the concept of humanism (along with its sub-concepts) is not a scientifi c
concept, it is an ideological notion – and a moral ideological notion at that.
Th e ideological validity of this concept is therefore not in question. In Marxism,
when we speak of ideology, we are aware that ideology (e.g. moral ideology) is
not a pure illusion, but a representation that, albeit skewed and illusory,
nevertheless alludes to something real, whose existence it designates without,
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158 L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172
however, providing (scientifi c) knowledge of it. Th erefore, we can, to a certain
extent, make use of, say, the expression ‘socialist humanism’ as an ideological
expression, in order, preliminarily and roughly, to designate the existence of a
number of practical eff ects expected to arise from the revolutionary activity
of a Bolshevik party, such as the end of class exploitation, the improvement of
the lot of the exploited, the disappearance of class exploitation, the end of
political and ideological domination, etc.
We can, to a certain extent, utilise this ‘humanist-socialist’ or ‘humanist-
Marxist’ formula, but only after making three very important reservations.
Th e fi rst reservation is that we steep ourselves in the fundamental truth that
this formula has no theoretical value, in other words, no value as scientifi c
knowledge.
Th e second reservation is that we recognise that we should use much better
formulae, ones that are closer to scientifi c knowledge than this humanist
formula and its corollaries. For example, we say something much more precise
when we speak of wage-labour rather than of ‘alienated’ labour (a humanist
formula); we do the same when we speak of class exploitation rather than of
‘economic alienation,’ and so on.
Th is second reservation is extremely important. For we have learned from
Marx and Lenin that one cannot use such ideological formulae with impunity.
When, ignoring the scientifi c formulae at our disposal, we employ ideological
formulae (such as humanist formulae), we risk being contaminated by them
and relapsing from science into ideology (as did the revisionists Dühring,
Bernstein, and Léon Blum, ‘humanists’ all). Ideology is not inactive, but acts
on those who accept it: that is why the ideological struggle, the struggle against
ideology, is one of the principal parts of Marxism.
Of course, in order to distinguish ourselves from the barbarians in the
world, we can call ourselves ‘humanists.’ However, that which makes us
communists is not just the fact that we are not barbarians. Th ere is a deeper
reason that both requires and enables us not to be barbarians: possession of
scientifi c knowledge of the historical process. We do not content ourselves with
moral principles and declarations but, rather, link these moral principles, these
principles of moral ideology (for example, humanist principles) to the reality
of the relations of production and the relations between social classes. What
makes us communists is that we see clearly into moral ideology and that we call
things by their proper names. Communists can really be human because they
are not ‘humanists,’ because our actions do not rest upon moral (and therefore
ideological ) principles, but upon scientifi c ones.
We can therefore perfectly well do without the ideological concepts of
humanism, even from a practical standpoint. Indeed, if we are not to expose our
scientifi c theory to the contagion of their ideology and end up falling back on
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L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172 159
pre-Marxist, pre-scientifi c positions, it is very much in our interest to do
without the ideological concepts of humanism even at the practical level.
Why, then, should we ever make use of the term ‘humanism,’ and of the
concepts derived from it? We should do so carefully, under well-defi ned
conditions, and only in order to make ourselves understood when fi rst approaching
those people whom we need to address and who conceive their ideal in terms
of (petty-bourgeois or Christian) humanist ideologies. I repeat: carefully and
on a fi rst approach, for our theory runs real risks if we systematically employ
these formulae and if we conceive our own theory in humanist terms. Th is is
naturally a temptation when one systematically employs such formulae.
It is here that my third reservation comes into play. If we ask why neither
Marx (in Capital and afterwards), nor Engels, nor Lenin, nor Stalin ever
declared that ‘Marxism is a humanism’, we will see that they did not do so for
crucial political reasons. As soon as words and expressions are used in the
political and ideological class struggle, they cease to be simple concepts and
become weapons, and will be for a long time yet, in a veritable fi ght unto
death, a veritable class struggle. To be precise: the term ‘humanism’ has always
been employed by bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology – including petty-
bourgeois interpretations of Marxism – in mortal combat with another term,
one which is absolutely vital for revolutionaries: class struggle. It is this reality,
verifi ed a thousand times over in the practice of class struggle, which explains
why Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin were never willing to proclaim that
‘Marxism is a humanism’.
To sum up:
1) Th e concepts of theoretical humanism (humanism, the human essence,
alienation, disalienation, loss of the human essence, reappropriation of
the human essence, the Whole Man, the generic essence of man, etc.)
are foreign to Marxist theory. Both in its historical-materialist and
dialectical-materialist aspects, Marxist theory comprises completely diff erent
scientifi c concepts that bear no relationship at all to the ideological
concepts of humanism.
2) As ideological concepts, humanistic concepts can have a practical value.
Nevertheless, we have every interest in avoiding such concepts (and, in
any case, in carefully controlling them when it is indispensable that we use
them at the pragmatic level ). For, inasmuch as they are ideological, these
concepts can contaminate our theory and expose this theory to serious
dangers, including that of theoretical revisionism. Th e ideological danger
represented by the pragmatic usage of these humanist concepts has in the
last analysis to do with the very deep (petty-bourgeois) class nature of
humanist ideologies.
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160 L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172
3) We must recall the political, class reasons that have barred the classics of
Marxism from declaring that ‘Marxism is a humanism’, and we must
draw the appropriate consequences.
Now that this has been made clear, what do we fi nd in Resolution II? We fi nd
a few phrases on ‘Marxist humanism,’ without a single allusion to the two
fundamental problems that the concept of humanism (and its sub-concepts)
poses for Marxism:
1) the problem of the bases for its claims (scientifi c or ideological);
2) the problem of the ideological struggle between humanism and class
struggle.
Resolution II declares that ‘there is a Marxist humanism’, that it is not ‘abstract’
like bourgeois humanism (but this provides no response to the question of the
bases for its claims – and the opposition of abstract and concrete is not,
understood in this way, a Marxist distinction); that it ‘fl ows from the historical
task of the working class’, that it ‘in no way signifi es the rejection of an
objective conception of reality for the sake of a vague impulse of the heart’,
that, on the contrary, ‘it bases its approach on a rigorously scientifi c conception
of the world’, etc.
1) Th e fi rst problem, the question of the bases for humanism’s pretensions
(which is precisely the object of ‘ongoing research’ and debate), is not
posed.
2) Th e second question, which does not need to be made the object of
research (for it summarises all the experience of the communist
movement), is not evoked.
Th is double silence is regrettable and, as we shall see, its consequences are not
long in coming. Simply omit these two problems, and a spiritualist ideology
familiar to all of us will leap into Marxism through the breach of the omission –
the spiritualist ideology which holds that Marxism is a ‘philosophy of man’, a
‘philosophy of the creation of man by man’, etc. It does not limit itself to one
role or to one practical use, but lays claim to being the theoretical truth of
Marxism itself.
Let us speak clearly. Th is ‘Marxist’-humanist ideology is today represented
by the philosophy of our comrade Garaudy. By reminding us that Marxism is
founded ‘on a scientifi c conception of the world,’ and must not be confused
with a ‘a vague impulse of the heart’, Resolution II proposes to limit the scope
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L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172 161
and the eff ects of this ideology. However, it only limits this ideology’s eff ects
(just as Resolution III limits its eff ects with respect to religion) without
undermining its existence, since the decisive question of the non-validity,
from a scientifi c standpoint, of ‘humanist’ concepts is passed over in silence.
I speak directly and frankly. Resolution II is stated in terms that refl ect the
theoretical compromise concluded with the humanist ideology of our comrade
Garaudy. It reminds him that he must not go too far. However, in exchange,
nothing is said about the philosophical question as to whether the grounds for
the claims of humanist theory are ideological or scientifi c. In addition, nothing
is said about the crucial problem of humanism versus class struggle. Th us, the
fl oodgates are left open to this ideology. As we will soon see in connection
with art and culture, this ideology loses no time turning all this to its advantage.
I do not say theoretical compromise by accident. Both Marx, in his ‘Critique
of the Gotha Programme’, and Lenin have taught us that, in order to forge
unity (with no trace of class collaboration), communists can make almost any
sort of compromise, with one exception: theoretical compromise. Th is is because
a theoretical compromise is always made between theory and an ideology. Th is
type of compromise always ends up turning against theory, never against
ideology. In a moment, we will see the proof of this proposition.
III. An error by suppression: the thesis of ‘the absence of a rupture
in the vast creative movement of the human spirit’
It is Resolution I that proclaims this thesis. Th e thesis is stated in terms that
have nothing at all to do with Marx, but that inevitably bring to mind the
language of idealist philosophers of history (Hegel, Brunshvicg). To be more
precise, they bring to mind the language of certain spiritualist philosophers of
creation (V. Cousin, Bergson, etc.).
Every attentive reader will wonder why this sentence surges up here,
altogether unexpectedly, at the end of a paragraph on art and culture (a
paragraph I will soon discuss).
In order to begin to understand this sentence, one has to compare it with
another from Resolution II, which states that: ‘Marxism is no more an alien
body in the world of culture than the proletarians are barbarians camping in
the city. Marxism is born from the development of culture and it gives meaning
to all that humanity has achieved.’
Yet drawing a connection between these two passages does not make
everything perfectly clear. In order to understand the implications of these
sentences, we need to know something about the ‘ongoing research’ in which
the resolution intervenes, and takes sides.
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162 L. Althusser / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 153–172
In fact, what the declarations condemn are specifi c theses advanced about
the ‘break’ or ‘epistemological rupture’ that have been argued at length in For
Marx and Reading ‘Capital’.
Th e theses I defend are intended to shed light on a reality that Marx clearly
recognised in his scientifi c work and that has to do, above all, with the
‘epistemological break’ that separates a science from the ideology which gave
birth to it. Th ese theses also bring out other ‘ruptural’ phenomena (‘qualitative
leaps,’ dialectical ‘threshold’, etc.) that have occurred in the history of the
development of human knowledge. Th e most famous instance of these theses
is provided by Marxist theory itself. On the basis of a detailed argument that
has yet to be seriously contested, and by following Marx very carefully, I have
shown that Marxist science [historical materialism] and Marxist philosophy
[dialectical materialism] were only able to constitute themselves on the basis
of an ‘epistemological rupture’ with previous ideological theories, namely, the
philosophy of history and classical philosophy. Th is is, in the Marxist-Leninist
tradition, a perfectly classical thesis.
When Marx declared that the conception of the essential principles of the
science of history had only been made possible by a ‘settling of accounts with
his former philosophical conscience’,5 he himself became the fi rst to recognise
the reality and necessity of this rupture. Here, too, I have done no more than
to return to the terms and the contents of Marx’s work and to the classical-
Marxist tradition in order to comment on them with some precision.
It is to this set of theses, theses organically bound up with Marxist-Leninist
theory, theses that it is impossible to dissociate from Marxist-Leninist theory,
theses indispensable to Marxist-Leninist theory, that Resolution II opposes
the calm affi rmation of ‘the absence of a rupture in the vast creative movement
of the human spirit’.
Everyone knows that the concepts at work in the expressions ‘human spirit’,
‘movement of the human spirit’, and ‘creative movement’ have their place, not
in Marxist theory, but in the idealist and spiritualist philosophies of Hegel,
Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, etc. However, if we can, let’s leave the words
aside and proceed to their contents. One wonders what becomes of the
fundamental distinction between science and ideology (and all its consequences,
especially those involving Marx) in this ‘vast creative movement without
rupture’. One also wonders how to think, without rupture, the law of
development by qualitative leaps.6
5. Marx 1977, pp. 261–5.
6. Althusser may be referring here to Engels’ argument in Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in
Science (Anti-Dühring) (Engels 1939, p. 53); but he probably also means to refer to Stalin’s
schematisation of dialectical law (Stalin 1972, pp. 304–5). Every Committee member would no
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